SunPass cuts time spent at toll booths

With the $25 transponder, motorists can pass through a special lane at 25 mph.

By JEAN HELLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2000

TAMPA -- Rudy Webb commutes the Veterans Expressway every day and has to fish three quarters out of his console going and coming to pay the toll. If it happens to be at the peak of rush hour, he has to wait in line for the privilege.

His employer cuts him a check each month to defray the cost. But Webb, a Tampa advertising account executive, says it's a hassle to cash the check, only to have rolls of quarters clanking around in his car.

So he is ready right now to sign up for SunPass, the automated toll collection system coming to area toll roads and the Sunshine Skyway bridge within the next month.

Already in use in the Panhandle and South Florida, SunPass involves a transponder, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, that attaches with Velcro to the windshield beneath the rear-view mirror. Extra attachment strips are available so the unit can be moved from vehicle to vehicle.

When a transponder passes through a toll plaza, the fee is deducted from the owner's credit balance.

At dedicated SunPass lanes, a car can move through at up to 25 mph. In mixed-use lanes, such as at the end of exit ramps, the vehicle must wait for a gate arm to rise, but there is no fumbling for change or lowering a window in a deluge.

"This will be great, so much easier," Webb said. "It will save a lot of time and a lot of hassle."

The schedule for opening SunPass operations in the Tampa Bay region starts with the Polk County Parkway, followed by the Sunshine Skyway, the Pinellas Bayway, the Veterans Expressway and the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

The Suncoast Parkway will have SunPass when the new road opens early next year.

"It's proving very popular with people," said Evelio Suarez, manager of SunPass operations for the Florida Department of Transportation. "We sold 100,000 units in the first five months of operations in South Florida. We've sold 220,000 statewide. By the end of the summer, we will have 450 SunPass lanes statewide, and you can use the system statewide."

All state toll roads are getting SunPass at a total cost of $38.6-million.

The SunPass transponder costs $25 and the first advance purchase of tolls is $25. When the vehicle passes under the scanner the toll is deducted from the balance. When the credit gets down to $10, the transponder signals, "Low Bal," and the owner can refresh the credit in any amount. (See box).

SunPass comes with a 45-day, money-back guarantee, including the unused balance.

On some roads, SunPass gets you a discount.

On Turnpike Division roads, which include the Florida Turnpike and the Veterans Expressway, you will get a 10 percent discount after you pay 40 tolls a month. On the Skyway, two-axle vehicles will get the same 25 percent discount that token users get now. Once SunPass is in place on the bridge, the token system will be phased out.

Three-axle vehicles, which currently get no discount on the Skyway, will be able to count Skyway trips toward the threshold of the 10 percent discount on the Veterans.

For drivers who frequently use the Pinellas Bayway, a special, smaller transponder will reflect the owner's participation in resident and commuter discount programs and will replace the window stickers used in those programs now. Although the smaller transponder is free, it can be used only on the Bayway. Someone who wants to use the Bayway and other toll roads will have to buy the $25 transponder, but it, too, can be programmed to acknowledge discount programs.

The system also will be used on the segmented concrete bridge scheduled to be dropped into place along the median of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway from the vicinity of the Brandon TownCenter on the east to the Channelside area near downtown Tampa. The bridge will become express lanes for SunPass users when completed in 2004, said Dawn Brown, marketing director of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority.

The lanes will carry one-way traffic into Tampa in the morning, then reverse to take traffic back out to Brandon in the afternoon.

"During rush-hour peaks we get tremendous backups at that eastern toll booth," Brown said. "The bridge should wipe them out."

In the near future, all toll roads in the state will be able to accept SunPass, even the roads in the Orlando area that now use E-Pass.

"We have an agreement with Orlando-Orange County to have SunPass over there by the end of the year," Suarez said. "They're already swapping out E-Pass plaza equipment for compatible technology."

SunPass first went into the Panhandle in April 1999, when it was put on the Mid-Bay Bridge near Destin. It was an immediate disaster, either deducting too much or nothing at all in one of every 10 uses.

It was a software problem, Suarez said, and it has been fixed.

Some frequent Bayway travelers are concerned about the new SunPass lane at the toll booth just off Interstate 275. It is fairly short, and the entrance to it in the months before it opened often was blocked by backed up traffic in the conventional toll lane next to it.

"We're aware that the design of that facility creates a situation where people who don't have a pass block off the SunPass lane," Suarez said. "It couldn't be helped. We think the problem will resolve itself. As more and more people get SunPass, the backups should go away."

A SunPass dedicated lane can process 1,800 cars an hour.

Lest anyone get the idea to run through the SunPass lanes without a valid transponder, Suarez said each will have a camera that photographs the license plate of the offending vehicle. The first violation will get the registered owner a warning. The second will draw fines of $50 or more.

"If the registered owner wasn't the driver," Suarez said, "he can come in and sign an affidavit to that effect, and we'll cite the person who ran it."

There are several ways to buy and replenish a SunPass transponder:

Call 1-888-TOLL-FLA and use with a credit card. You can call back each time you need to have more credit applied to your transponder, or you can set it up so a specified amount is charged to your card automatically, as needed.

Although the site won't be available for several weeks, you can apply and replenish on line at www.SunPass.com.

You can pick up an application at any Tampa Bay toll plaza and mail it in.

Transponders will be available at selected NAPA Auto Parts for a limited time.

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